With the proliferation of multimedia devices (e.g., handhelds and multimedia computers) users are accessing more and more audio data in different compressed formats. Audio recordings are typically stored in compressed format rather than in a raw sampled format because of huge memory resources that are required. Moreover, the introduction of higher sample rates, stereo channels, and multi-channels can be practically handled only by using compressed formats.
A user often has many files to access, where some of the files having audio content may be essentially duplicates. Moreover, files may have related audio content. For example, files may be associated into different audio categories including speech and music Categories may be further partitioned into the instrumental classification of the audio content. Thus, there is a real need for gauging similarities of files having audio content in order to categorize the files in order to better utilize memory resources.